Category Archives: gradhouse

Graduate House held an early celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. It was
tons of fun watching stepdancers in person! =) Way cool. I got to talk
to lots of other people, too. I like the way Graduate House organizes
all these events for the residents. I should drag Calum to more of
these events. He likes shooting events, but it’s hard to take pictures
at something unless you know someone connected to it. =)

After the party, Steve, Mike, Calum and I headed out to Mel’s Diner
for a late-night snack. We had a lot of fun talking about different
things. Afterwards, Steve and Mike played chess with me. We were all
almost falling asleep at the table, but we managed to play a good
game.

One of the wonderful things about Graduate House is that the Graduate
House Council organizes a lot of social events. Tonight I enjoyed a
free Singaporean noodle dinner in the common room. As food goes, it
wasn’t bad. I was there mainly for the conversation, though, and I
wasn’t disappointed. =D I had tons of fun chatting with Keynan(sp?)
and Elizabeth (both Emily’s suitemates). Andrew joined us too – he’s
the English major I played Scrabble with once. Stefan dropped by to
tell me about the vegetarian cooking classes he found, but the only
nearby one focuses on Indian cooking, and I’d rather have something
more general.

Emily was impressed with my outfit. “You have legs today,” she said. I
had decided to wear The Miniskirt today because I just find it _so_
much fun to shop for computer stuff all dressed up. It confuses
salespeople, particularly when I ask for Linux-supported wireless
cards. ;)

Anyway, Emily told me that she almost always saw me in very pretty
skirts, but this was the first time she saw me with a skirt that
short. (Yes, yes, thank you Kathy for getting me a skirt I’d never
have dared get myself. Come to think of it, where _are_ those barkada
pics? Hmm…)

After most people finished dinner and left, I played billiards with
Stairos (sp?) and Tarun. I’m still not very consistent in billiards,
but I managed to sink a few good shots. After Tarun left, Stairos and
I played table tennis. He likes smashing, and whenever he does that I
tease him about being such a bully. I’m happy to report that I managed
to make contact with the ball a couple of times – probably more by
accident than reflex. Lusine joined us and we practiced for a while.

I’m not very good at table tennis yet, but I find it a lot of fun. My
coordination used to be absolutely terrible, but after a while I
realized that I didn’t have to be able to think about how to intercept
the ball, I just had to actually do it. For some strange reason,
playing table tennis makes me feel like a character in a Japanese
animation.

And yes, I did manage to get some writing done. Not much, though. I’ll
have to wake up early tomorrow to do some more work on it before the
cooking workshop…

Random Japanese sentence: Ã£ÂƒÂ†Ã£ÂƒÂ¼Ã£ÂƒÂ–Ã£ÂƒÂ«Ã£ÂÂ«Ã§ÂŒÂ«Ã£ÂÂ®Ã¨Â¶Â³Ã¨Â·Â¡Ã£ÂÂŒÃ¤Â»Â˜Ã£ÂÂ„Ã£ÂÂ¦Ã£ÂÂ„Ã£Â‚Â‹Ã£Â€Â‚ There are footprints of a cat on the table. Teiboru ni neko no sokuseki ga tsuite iru.

I went to the common room to study, and I heard someone playing “Speak
Softly, Love” from The Godfather. It turned out to be Joe, whom I’ve
seen at coffee night before. He’s an oido: he plays things by ear, so
his rendition of it was in a different key and was slightly different
from how I remembered it.

I showed him the opening notes of “Speak Softly, Love” based on the
arrangement my sister learned when we were kids. I knew the opening
part because I annotated the notes with letters for her. We had a lot
of fun chatting about his piano teacher’s style. I thought the
emphasis on learning the feel of the music made much more sense than
the exercises my piano teacher made me do when I took lessons, and I
wish my piano teacher had been like his. Still, maybe I can work on my
ear, just as I’ve worked on my coordination and grace. <laugh>

We talked about computers, too. It turned out to be the first
computer-related conversation he’d had in a long time, and he enjoyed
being able to rant about the brokenness of Java and other geeky
topics.

I didn’t end up reading any more papers, though. <laugh>
Tomorrow, I’m really going to have to work on my questions for the
class and my summary paper. After my FIS requirements are done, I can
throw myself into the reading paper…

Toastmasters from 6 to 8 means I usually can’t meet anyone for dinner
on Tuesdays, which is why I was surprised to get a call from Trevor at
8:30 or so. He invited me to a barbecue with Brian. The Kensington
market I usually go to for meat had closed already and I didn’t feel
like chancing Chinatown. I also didn’t want to walk to Dominion and
being even _more_ late. Fortunately, I had some hamburger patties in
the freezer. Hooray for the well-stocked pantry!

Although the weather was a bit cold (it snowed a little bit today!
argh!), standing around in a coat and chatting with friends was worth
it. I defrosted the patties in a microwave, put one away, and grilled
the other patty under the guidance of Brian and Trevor. The potatoes I
wrapped in foil and started grilling were nowhere near done by the
time the burgers, porkchop and steak were done, so I took the potatoes
off the grill. Brian thoughtfully anticipated that and included me in
his calculations for rice. Awwww. =) (The man cooks rice with a pot!
_Proper_ rice, too, not instant rice! Coolness. =) )

Keynan dropped by with a platter of chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.
She found the cookie recipe on the Net. I wonder if I can share
Kathy’s Top Secret Cookie Recipe with her – but then it wouldn’t be
Top Secret, would it?

I washed a number of their dishes to thank them for hosting me and
teaching me how to grill, following the strange rules of my
dinner-party etiquette. Also, it’s kinda fun. Eventually Trevor took
the sponge away from me and put it on the other side of the room.
Spoilsport.

Keynan brought a DVD of Terminator. I finally got to watch the thing.
=)

After the movie, Brian pulled a scary face to stop me from finishing
the rest of their dishes. I couldn’t help but laugh, which made him
laugh, and then no amount of coaxing could get him to do the scary
face again.